Love Letters: A Rose Harbor Novel (31 page)

“I’m glad I read Paul’s letter again,” I whispered, and reached for a tissue to wipe my nose. In essence, Paul was telling me to get on with my life and that he would always be with me. He was adamant that he didn’t want me to spend the rest of my days grieving for him, but I would. His loss had completely impacted my life. I couldn’t help but mourn for what might have been. He asked me to make a difference, and I hoped I was doing it through the inn.

The inn …

I’d always hoped this inn would be a place of healing. I’d seen it with a few of my guests. I saw it in those who had checked in with heavy hearts, burdened by the problems of life. Yet by the time they left, their spirits had lifted and they’d found solace in much the same way I had. I believed the inn was making a difference and had become the healing place I’d always hoped it would be … until this weekend. As far as I could tell, everything had fallen apart for Maggie and Roy.

Unexpectedly, Rover jerked around and stood in front of my door. I got up and opened it for him. He immediately shot out, pausing to stop and look over his shoulder as if to say I should follow him. As ridiculous as it is to admit, I’d become accustomed to following his orders.

It didn’t take me long to discover what the problem was. Ellie had returned and sat in the living room with her mother. Their heads were close together, and Virginia had her hand on Ellie’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. I didn’t want to intrude or listen in on a private conversation and was about to turn away when Virginia glanced up. She seemed grateful to see me.

“Would it be possible to get a pot of tea?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Rover left my side and settled down by Ellie’s feet as if to console and reassure her. His chin rested atop her feet as if to hold her in place. If she noticed, Ellie gave no indication. Her voice was low and troubled, and while I wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping, I couldn’t help but overhear.

“Scott made excuses for him, but I refused to listen or believe anything he has to say any longer. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“What did Tom tell you?”

“What could he say?” Ellie asked, sounding terribly sad. “He never intended to hurt me. He thought he was doing something good for his stepfather, but not once did he take into consideration what he was doing to me.”

Virginia leaned her head closer to her daughter and hugged her briefly. “Oh Ellie, I’m so sorry.”

“Are you, Mom?” Ellie asked. “Are you really? Isn’t this what you’ve been telling me all along? My problem is I was convinced you were wrong and that I’d show you what it was to find a good man who would love me.” She hiccupped a sob as if to say she was the one who’d been the fool.

“I am sorry … sorry for tainting your view of men, and giving you a reason to want to prove me wrong.”

Ellie’s hiccupping sob turned into a sad sort of laugh. “I want to go home … this whole trip was a disaster from beginning to end.”

“Oh Ellie.”

“There’s no reason to stay …”

“What about your dinner with your father?” Virginia asked.

They were interrupted by the front door being flung open. Normally, Rover would have been on his feet and barking, but he refused to leave Ellie’s side.

Roy came into the house as if he intended to tear off the door by its hinges. He looked around and saw Ellie and her mother in the living room and me in the kitchen, paused momentarily, and then raced up the stairs.

Virginia looked at me, her eyes wide. “What’s his problem?”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say.

Not two minutes after Roy stormed up the stairs, he returned and confronted me in the kitchen. “Where’s Maggie?” he demanded gruffly.

“I don’t know.”

“Her suitcase is gone.”

“Yes, I know. She left shortly after you dropped her off.”

Roy frowned. “She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

I’d tried to find out but had gotten nothing out of her. “I don’t think she knew herself.”

“Of all the stupid … the woman is irrational and …”

“Pregnant,” I finished for him.

His eyes narrowed with accusation. “She told you?”

“Just that.” I could only assume there was more, and apparently lots more.

Roy clenched and unclenched his fists as if using restraint not to slam one against the wall. “She can’t have gotten far.”

“No, I don’t imagine that she has.”

“I’ll find her.” His face hardened with determination. “And when I do, we’ll be checking out.”

In his current frame of mind, I wouldn’t consider that a loss, but I felt obliged to tell him my policy regarding early departures.

“You’re paid through Sunday, and I can’t give you a refund.”

“I don’t care,” he snapped. “Keep the money.”

I didn’t notice any love or real concern in him over his wife’s disappearance, only anger and something else I didn’t immediately recognize, but then it came to me. Roy was dealing with grief and loss.

“Do you know which way she went?” he asked, as he pulled his car keys from his pocket.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see her once she left the driveway.”

He nodded and headed out of the inn.

It seemed Virginia, Ellie, and I all breathed a collective sigh of relief as Roy left the house.

The teakettle whistled, and I returned my attention to putting together a tray for the mother and daughter. The doorbell chimed, and Rover was instantly alert and rushed to the door.

I opened it to find an attractive middle-aged man with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. He looked up at me, and for a moment it seemed he didn’t know what to say.

“I’m here to see Ellie Reynolds,” he said. “I’m her father.”

The instant Scott Reynolds entered the living room, Ellie’s mother leaped to her feet. She moved behind the sofa as though to put a barrier between her and the man she’d once loved. Ellie turned to look at her mother and then her father.

She waited for him to speak. With everything that had happened since she’d last seen him, including her talk with Tom and her mother’s arrival, Ellie had nearly forgotten that she’d agreed to meet Scott for dinner.

To Ellie’s surprise, it was her mother who spoke first. “Scott.”

He seemed equally dumbfounded. “Ginny.”

Ginny?
Ellie had never heard her mother referred to as anything but Virginia. Her grandmother had insisted on it.

The two stared at each other like schoolyard children waiting for the other to make the first move in a game of tag.

Her father’s face softened perceptively. “The years have been kind to you,” he said, after clearing his throat.

“You look … well,” Ellie’s mother said, almost as if she were in a trance.

Scott ran his hand along the side of his head. “The hair’s a lot thinner … You look exactly as I remember you.”

It seemed both had forgotten Ellie was in the room. She had to resist waving her arms above her head in order to remind them that they weren’t alone.

After an awkward pause, Virginia spoke. “I understand you met with our daughter this afternoon.”

Her father’s gaze shifted toward Ellie. As a young girl and even later as a preteen, she’d built up this fantasy of what her father would be like. She had him pictured in her mind, not so much what he looked like, but how he would be and how much he would love her. He would sit and listen to her play the piano and praise her efforts. He would take her to father-daughter dances and their steps would match perfectly as they whirled around the polished dance floor. When a date came to pick her up, he would drill the young man and be protective. Unfortunately, none of her fantasies had come to pass. Her father had remained nothing more than an absent figure in her life. Until now.

“Ellie’s a terrific girl. We met earlier this afternoon, and she’s matured into a lovely, capable woman,” he said.

She had? Ellie basked in those few words, praise she’d longed to hear from her father, words, however few, that validated her in his eyes.

“Tom thinks the world of her. She’s all he talks about … It reminds me of when we first met and how crazy we once were about each other.”

Ellie was about to tell her father exactly what she thought of Tom, but she wasn’t given the chance.

“Tom is your stepson?” her mother asked, although Ellie had explained that fact quite clearly.

Scott nodded. “His intentions were good, although he went about our meeting all wrong. Still, he’s a fine young man.”

“He isn’t all that wonderful in my eyes.” Ellie could keep silent no longer.

Both her mother and father looked at her as if they’d forgotten she was in the room, which apparently they had. “Tom misled me. He lied and he used my attraction to him for his own selfish reasons.”

“He did it for me,” Scott explained, and to his credit, he sounded apologetic. “Tom knew how deeply I regretted not knowing my daughter or being the father she deserved.”

“He had no right to lie … to mislead me.” Ellie wanted to make that one point crystal clear. “None whatsoever.”

Her father nodded and took one step closer. “Like I said, his intentions were good, but his methods left a lot to be desired.”

“No kidding.” Ellie didn’t understand what was happening. All her parents seemed capable of doing was staring at each other. This made no sense to her. This was the golden opportunity to let her mother tell Scott exactly what she thought of him. Virginia had certainly shared those feelings with Ellie often enough. Wasn’t this the chance Virginia had impatiently waited for all these years? At last her mother could tell this man who had broken her heart exactly how his abandonment had tainted her life. Perhaps she needed a bit of prompting.

“Scott,” Ellie said, hoping to break the spell. “You have some explaining to do.”

“You’re right, I do,” he agreed, and advanced another step toward them.

When they’d met earlier that afternoon Ellie hadn’t had the chance to ask him more than a couple questions, but that wasn’t his fault. She had been overwhelmed by the fact she was talking to her father.

His gaze centered on Ellie. “Seeing you brought back a flash flood of memories of your mother and me.”

“I have questions that need to be answered,” Ellie said, and as far as she was concerned, there was no time like the present to get the answer to the most pressing one. “I need to know why you walked out on Mom and me. Why did you leave us the way you did?”

His face tightened, and he cast an accusing glare toward Ellie’s mother. “I didn’t walk out on either one of you.”

“Yes, you did. Mom said …” Ellie paused and looked at her mother, but her mother refused to meet her gaze. Virginia seemed to find something interesting at her feet that demanded her attention. “Mom?”

“I was given an ultimatum,” her father explained. “Your mother wanted me to take money from her family, which I refused to do. When I wouldn’t play ball with your grandfather, he had me fired and made sure my life was miserable.”

“Dad only wanted to help,” Virginia insisted, defending her father.

“No, he didn’t,” Scott argued just as heatedly. “He wanted to control us, mostly me. He’d had you wrapped around his finger, and when he found he couldn’t control me he retaliated. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I decided we had to move. I hoped you loved me enough to break away from your family.”

“And starve?”

“Ginny, for the love of heaven, we wouldn’t have starved. We had little more than each other, and for me that was enough, but apparently it wasn’t enough for you.”

“You can’t live on love,” Virginia said.

That sounded like something her grandparents would say, Ellie mused.

“We lived on love the first two years, and, yes, there were hard times. We rarely had more than a couple dimes in our pockets, but we survived and were better for it.”

“We did make it,” her mother agreed, “but it was hard, Scott. You worked two jobs and I rarely saw you. Ellie has no memories of you. All Dad wanted you to do was accept a loan.”

“A loan with so many strings attached that they felt like a noose around my neck.”

Ellie’s mother shook her head as if to dismiss the accusation. “It was your pride.”

Scott looked at her as if weary of the argument that was more than twenty years old. “What does it matter now? It’s all water under the bridge.”

“Yes,” Virginia agreed. “Water that’s long since washed out to sea.”

Ellie waited for her mother to bring up the letter she’d written shortly after her husband had moved out. Virginia didn’t, and in that instant Ellie knew why. It hurt her mother’s pride to disclose the fact that she’d reached out to her husband only to be rejected.

The silence grew thick, like fog rolling in off Puget Sound, circling the room.

“I have another question,” Ellie inserted, and it seemed both her parents were relieved to move forward.

“Yes?” her father said, looking to her expectantly.

“In fact, I had an entire list of questions I wanted to ask.” Ellie felt there was no time like now with both her parents in the room.

Scott grinned. He actually grinned. “You sounded so like your mother just now.”

“Ask your questions, Ellie,” Virginia insisted. “Perhaps we should all sit down. I asked Jo Marie to brew a pot of tea, which she did. I’ll pour.”